The Book of Dragons
map of England, and the sides of the map were tilting themselves up, so
that the rain ran down toward the hole.
"Oh, hurrah, hurrah, hurrah!" cried Effie, and she hurried back to the
taps and turned on everything that seemed wet. "Showery," "Good open
weather," "Nice growing weather for the crops," and even "South" and
"South-West," because she had heard her father say that those winds
brought rain.
And now the floods of rain were pouring down on the country, and great
sheets of water flowed toward the center of the map, and cataracts of
water poured into the great round hole in the middle of the map, and the
dragons were being washed away and disappearing down the waste pipe in
great green masses and scattered green shoals--single dragons and
dragons by the dozen; of all sizes, from the ones that carry off
elephants down to the ones that get in your tea.
Presently there was not a dragon left. So then they turned off the tap
named "Waste," and they half-turned off the one labeled "Sunshine"--it
was broken, so that they could not turn it off altogether--and they
turned on "Fair to moderate" and "Showery" and both taps stuck, so that
they could not be turned off, which accounts for our climate.
* * * * *
How did they get home again? By the Snowdon railway of course.
And was the nation grateful? Well--the nation was very wet. And by the
time the nation had gotten dry again it was interested in the new
invention for toasting muffins by electricity, and all the dragons were
almost forgotten. Dragons do not seem so important when they are dead
and gone, and, you know, there never was a reward offered.
And what did Father and Mother say when Effie and Harry got home?
My dear, that is the sort of silly question you children always will
ask. However, just for this once I don't mind telling you.
Mother said: "Oh, my darlings, my darlings, you're safe--you're safe!
You naughty children--how could you be so disobedient? Go to bed at
once!"
And their father the doctor said: "I wish I had known what you were
going to do! I should have liked to preserve a specimen. I threw away
the one I got out of Effie's eye. I intended to get a more perfect
specimen. I did not anticipate this immediate extinction of the
species."
The professor said nothing, but he rubbed his hands. He had kept his
specimen--the one the size of an earwig that he gave Harry half a crown
for--and he has it to this day.
You must get him to show it to you!
IV. The Ice Dragon, or Do as You Are Told
This is the tale of the wonders that befell on the evening of the
eleventh of December, when they did what they were told not to do. You
may think that you know all the unpleasant things that could possibly
happen to you if you are disobedient, but there are some things which
even you do not know, and they did not know them either.
Their names were George and Jane.
There were no fireworks that year on Guy Fawkes' Day, because the heir
to the throne was not well. He was cutting his first tooth, and that is
a very anxious time for any person--even for a Royal one. He was really
very poorly, so that fireworks would have been in the worst possible
taste, even at Land's End or in the Isle of Man, whilst in Forest Hill,
which was the home of Jane and George, anything of the kind was quite
out of the question. Even the Crystal Palace, empty-headed as it is,
felt that this was no time for Catherine-wheels.
But when the Prince had cut his tooth, rejoicings were not only
admissible but correct, and the eleventh of December was proclaimed
firework day. All the people were most anxious to show their loyalty,
and to enjoy themselves at the same time. So there were fireworks and
torchlight processions, and set pieces at the Crystal Palace, with
"Blessings on our Prince" and "Long Live our Royal Darling" in
different-colored fires; and the most private of boarding schools had a
half holiday; and even the children of plumbers and authors had tuppence
each given them to spend as they liked.
George and Jane had sixpence each--and they spent the whole amount on a
golden rain, which would not light for ever so long, and when it did
light went out almost at once, so they had to look at the fireworks in
the gardens next door, and at the ones at the Crystal Palace, which were
very glorious indeed.
All their relations had colds in their heads, so Jane and George were
allowed to go out into the garden alone to let off their firework. Jane
had put on her fur cape and her thick gloves, and her hood with the
silver fox fur on it that was made out of Mother's old muff; and George
had his overcoat with the three capes, and his comforter, and Father's
sealskin traveling cap with the pieces that come down over your ears.
It was dark in the garden, but the fireworks all about made it seem very
gay, and though the children were cold they were quite sure that they
were enjoying themselves.
They got up on the fence at the end of the garden to see better; and
then they saw, very far away, where the edge of the dark world is, a
shining line of straight, beautiful lights arranged in a row, as if they
were the spears carried by a fairy army.
"Oh, how pretty," said Jane. "I wonder what they are. It looks as if the
fairies were planting little shining baby poplar trees and watering them
with liquid light."
"Liquid fiddlestick!" said George. He had been to school, so he knew
that these were only the Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights. And he
said so.
"But what is the Rory Bory what's-its-name?" asked Jane. "Who lights it,
and what's it there for?"
George had to own that he had not learned that.
"But I know," said he, "that it has something to do with the Great Bear,
and the Dipper, and the Plough, and Charles's Wain."
"And what are they?" asked Jane.
"Oh, they're the surnames of some of the star families. There goes a
jolly rocket," answered George, and Jane felt as if she almost
understood about the star families.
The fairy spears of light twinkled and gleamed: They were much prettier
than the big, blaring, blazing bonfire that was smoking and flaming and
spluttering in the next-door-but-one garden--prettier even than the
colored fires at the Crystal Palace.
"I wish we could see them nearer," Jane said. "I wonder if the star
families are nice families--the kind that Mother would like us to go to
tea with, if we were little stars?"
"They aren't that sort of families at all, Silly," said her brother,
kindly trying to explain. "I only said 'families' because a kid like you
wouldn't have understood if I'd said constel ... and, besides, I've
forgotten the end of the word. Anyway, the stars are all up in the sky,
so you can't go to tea with them."
"No," said Jane. "I said if we were little stars."
"But we aren't," said George.
"No," said Jane, with a sigh. "I know that. I'm not so stupid as you
think, George. But the Tory Bories are somewhere at the edge. Couldn't
we go and see them?"
"Considering you're eight, you haven't much sense." George kicked his
boots against the fencing to warm his toes. "It's half the world away."
"It looks very near," said Jane, hunching up her shoulders to keep her
neck warm.
"They're close to the North Pole," said George. "Look here--I don't care
a straw about the Aurora Borealis, but I shouldn't mind discovering the
North Pole: It's awfully difficult and dangerous, and then you come home
and write a book about it with a lot of pictures, and everybody says how
brave you are."
Jane got off the fence.
"Oh, George, _let's_," she said. "We shall never have such a chance
again--all alone by ourselves--and quite late, too."
"I'd go right enough if it wasn't for you," George answered gloomily,
"but you know they always say I lead you into mischief--and if we went
to the North Pole we should get our boots wet, as likely as not, and
you remember what they said about not going on the grass."
"They said the _lawn_," said Jane. "We're not going on the _lawn_. Oh,
George, do, do let's. It doesn't look so _very_ far--we could be back
before they had time to get dreadfully angry."
"All right," said George, "but mind, I don't want to go."
So off they went. They got over the fence, which was very cold and white
and shiny because it was beginning to freeze, and on the other side of
the fence was somebody else's garden, so they got out of that as quickly
as they could, and beyond that was a field where there was another big
bonfire, with people standing around it who looked quite dark-skinned.
"It's like Indians," said George, and wanted to stop and look, but Jane
pulled him on, and they passed by the bonfire and got through a gap in
the hedge into another field--a dark one; and far away, beyond quite a
number of other dark fields, the Northern Lights shone and sparkled and
twinkled.
Now, during the winter the Arctic regions come much farther south than
they are marked on the map. Very few people know this, though you would
think they could tell it by the ice in the jugs of a morning. And just
when George and Jane were starting for the North Pole, the Arctic
regions had come down very nearly as far as Forest Hill, so that, as the
children walked on, it grew colder and colder, and presently they saw
that the fields were covered with snow, and there were great icicles
hanging from all the hedges and gates. And the Northern Lights still
seemed some way off.
They were crossing a very rough, snowy field when Jane first noticed the
animals. There were white rabbits and white hares and all sorts and
sizes of white birds, and some larger creatures in the shadows of the
hedges that Jane was sure were wolves and bears.
"Polar bears and Arctic wolves, of course I mean," she said, for she did
not want George to think her stupid again.
There was a great hedge at the end of this field, all covered with snow
and icicles; but the children found a place where there was a hole, and
as no bears or wolves seemed to be just in that part of the hedge, they
crept through and scrambled out of the frozen ditch on the other side.
And then they stood still and held their breath with wonder.
For in front of them, running straight and smooth right away to the
Northern Lights, lay a great wide road of pure dark ice, and on each
side were tall trees all sparkling with white frost, and from the boughs
of the trees hung strings of stars threaded on fine moonbeams, and
shining so brightly that it was like a beautiful fairy daylight. Jane
said so; but George said it was like the electric lights at the Earl's
Court Exhibition.
The rows of trees went as straight as ruled lines away--away and
away--and at the other end of them shone the Aurora Borealis.
There was a signpost of silvery snow, and on it in letters of pure ice
the children read: THIS WAY TO THE NORTH POLE.
Then George said: "Way or no way, I know a slide when I see one--so here
goes." And he took a run on the frozen snow, and Jane took a run when
she saw him do it, and the next moment they were sliding away, each with
feet half a yard apart, along the great slide that leads to the North
Pole.
This great slide is made for the convenience of the Polar bears, who,
during the winter months, get their food from the Army and Navy
Stores--and it is the most perfect slide in the world. If you have never
come across it, it is because you have never let off fireworks on the
eleventh of December, and have never been thoroughly naughty and
disobedient. But do not be these things in the hope of finding the great
slide--because you might find something quite different, and then you
will be sorry.
The great slide is like common slides in that when once you have started